Last week EU regulators cleared News Corp. (NWS-A) and NBC Universal (GE) to launch their alternative rival to YouTube (GOOG), which is as yet unnamed.
According to the European Commission, they were unable to find any antitrust problems and had received no complaints from rivals of the large media companies.
The service which is starting off with $100 million in financing, is scheduled to launch sometime this summer. Media units that will participate at the beginning of the service will be CNBC, Fox Broadcasting, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Telemundo and BSkyB.
It'll be interesting to see how this all works out, especially on the side of News Corp. With Rupert Murdoch bidding on Dow Jones & Co. (DJ), while preparing to launch their new cable business channel; and rumors he may trade MySpace for a piece of Yahoo (YHOO), it boggles the mind to think what possible integrations could come about from all this.
You can see all these pieces of a puzzle set in motion, with all sorts of possibilities coming from them. This summer should be a blast as far as all this goes in relationship to Murdoch, the new video launch, and what will happen with MySpace and Yahoo!.
Clearance by the EU was one more step that needed to be taken to bring it all together.
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